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Flour Water Recipes

My friend eats uncooked pasta. I tried it, and it's not that bad. In general, combining flour and water makes palatable and filling food. Inspired, I've decided to make a series of recipes using only two ingredients: flour and water.

The recipes differ in the ratio of flour to water, which results in different textures. Clearly, recipes made with only flour and water do not have that much flavor and should ideally be eaten with something else.

Provided that you don't burn anything, even the worst case scenarios should be edible.

Undercooking a recipe: The recipe may taste a bit pasty.

Adding too much liquid: The recipe will have a softer texture and may taste like very soft pasta.

Adding too little liquid: The recipe will be drier. In the unlikely event you end up with something like hardtack, crush it up and serve with soup.

Ingredient Discussion

Flour: I use all-purpose flour. Substituting self-raising flour may give you fluffier results. Substituting other types of flour (whole wheat, spelt, oat) should also work, but the consistency may be different.

Water: I use room temperature tap water. If adding rich ingredients, make sure to keep the total amount of liquid constant.

Rich Ingredients

Quantities are given based on 1/2 cup of flour.

Milk: You can substitute milk for water. Any sort of milk, cow or vegan, will work.

Eggs: Add up to 1 egg.

Butter, oil: Add up to 1 tablespoon of melted butter or oil.

Salt, sugar, spices: Add up to 1/8 teaspoon of coarse salt or any spice. Add up to 1 tablespoon of sugar.

Recipe List

Inspired by this list, here's a list of recipes that can be made with only flour and water. The list will be continually updated.

Flour porridge can be made using just flour, water, and a microwave. You can make a bowl of smooth and creamy porridge in under 2 minutes. Porridge usually contains milk and spices, so you can season to taste.

If you have a stove top, you should definitely try these simple vegan crepes. You don't need to mess with dough, and you can make a batch of fresh, soft pancakes in 10 minutes. Crepes usually contain butter, eggs, and milk, so adding any of the rich ingredients would work well.

Finally, tortillas that don't taste like cardboard! With homemade flour tortillas, you can easily transform a mishmash of ingredients into dinner. Try them with fluffy scrambled eggs and gooey cheese for an excellent breakfast burrito. You can add oil for a more authentic tortilla.

Homemade matzah is part tortilla, part cracker. Enjoy a batch of crisp, fresh flatbreads in under 20 minutes. Try them with olive oil and salt for more flavor.

Homemade crackers are chewy crisp and full of carby goodness. You can bake up a batch of these simple, snackable crackers and under 30 minutes. Feel free to customize the flavor by adding spices or oil.

Eggless pasta is a bit of a struggle to make by hand, but has better texture than store bought pasta. Making pasta is a great way to use up dough that's too hard. For a richer pasta, you can add eggs instead of water.

Hardtack is a very hard cracker that can last for years. In other words, it's an edible rock. I do not suggest making hardtack unless you are preparing for emergency situations.

You need flour, water, and yeast to make bread. Wild yeast exists on flour, so you can make bread with only flour and water by cultivating a sourdough starter. The resulting bread has a better texture and more complex flavor. Unfortunately, the process takes several days of monitoring. If you want to bake bread, buying commercial yeast would be far more convenient.

Recipes using mainly flour and water

These recipes primarily use flour and water, but require additional ingredients, which are mostly pantry staples.

Scallion pancakes are crispy, chewy tortillas with multiple flaky layers. Cut into wedges, scallion pancakes make the perfect appetizer. In addition to flour and water, you need oil, salt, and scallions, but you can leave out the scallions.

Reader Interactions

Comments

I love this post!!! I will never cease to be amazed at the variety of delicious foods you can make with very simple ingredients. It's amazing to me that a lot of basic breads have basically four ingredients--flour, water, yeast, salt--and yet depending on ratios and preparation, you can get really different textures and tastes for your bread. Looking at this post, it's sort of blowing my mind that you can make all these different (really tasty) foods from just water and flour.

Hi Elaine, I am alone on my sailboat tonight, anchored off Saint Martin and feeling too lazy to go ashore. But all I had left was some flour, oil and honey (OK beer too). So I googled to find out what I could do and I found your excellent website. Those vegan crepes with honey were delicious! Thank you so much!

We're going through a financially tough time at my house at the moment and all I had left when opening the kitchen cupboards tonight was flour, honey and spices. I made some crackers and soup tonight and everyone was able to eat. Thank you. You helped save my family from going to bed hungry tonight. I will make the porridge tomorrow morning and mix in some honey. This list will be helpful to us for the rest of the week. God bless.

Great article, been looking for weeks for something like this and while I've come across many individual flour and water recipes i've yet to come across one where someone was trying to put it all in one place.

You mentioned you would like to add to it i'd like to share a couple of the things i've stumbled across and used to success.

Toasted flour gravy
I was introduced to this idea under the name poor man gravy in northern ontario but was lead to believe it came over from quebec so probably europe before that. Basically dry flour is toasted in a frypan until it browns (since no oil or fat is used you need to be stirring constantly). Like a roux the longer you cook it the more the flavour develops. Add water and whisk to make into gravy.

Steaming noodles
To give your noodles a better chew factor. Let the dough rest thirty min then steam it on the stove until the outer half inch gelatinizes then knead out hot before cutting. You'll swear there was protien added.

Seitan
Ok not what most people know as seitan but still flour protein. Very bland. But basically you knead a flour water dough under cold water. Its usually done under running water but if you pour the milky runoff into a seperate bowl when you change the water you can decant off the water leaving just wheat starch which makes up most of the flour. Knead under water until the water change goes clear. Fair warning. The dough will start feeling like its coming apart part way. Have faith and keep going.

Pap
This one is known by many names across africa and is usually made with corn flour but if you save that starch from the seitan and keep pouring off the water as it settles you'll eventually end up with a thick paste. Slowly pour boiling water into the bowl while stirring and it will cook the starch as it fills. Stop when you reach the desired consistency and let it sit for a minute. I usually stop at about the consistency of mashed potatoes.

Anyway. Thanks again for the article. I hope i traded some info back to keep the universe even hehe

I can't believe I found this site! I'm always trying to use up what we have in the house before I make another big grocery trip, but I lack the creativity to figure out what to do with these random items. Thanks so much!

Tortillas are not actually something to eat with syrups or something, but they are eaten with vegetables or sabji as we call it in India. Also tortillas are called chapatti in India and we eat them with every meal 😂. By the way, your recipes are really helpful. Thank you